Police that night had been looking for a group of seven to nine African American men, including one shirtless one, who had been walking the streets, reportedly damaging property and yelling profanities. Within minutes of receiving the group's last known location, police several blocks away focused their attention on a group of three young men: Gurule, his 20-year-old brother and their friend.

That was the narrative up to the point where Thai Gurule found himself on the receiving end of fists and Tasers. Ignoring the fact that this group had little in common with the suspects other than race, we come to what turned this incident into a confrontation and, finally, a one-side melee.

Cue escalation. The officers decided to cuff Gurule (for "resisting arrest," apparently). As a crowd began to gather, the officers decided to move Gurule into a prone position for cuffing, supposedly for officer safety. But rather than let Gurule move to a prone position, one of the officers decided to speed up the process by sweeping Gurule's feet out from underneath him. From that point, it became an uncontrolled beating. One officer held Gurule by the hair while the other two wrestled him to the ground and hit him multiple times with their fists and knees. Finding the one-sided "struggle" to be ineffective, Sgt. Lile deployed his Taser.

After they were done throwing blows, the officers threw the book at Thai Gurule, listing all of the following charges on the police report:

The accompanying reports filed by the officers maintained that Gurule repeatedly swung his fists at officers and tried to choke one of them. Unfortunately for these officers, multiple recordings of the incident that contradicted their narrative were made available to the judge.

Judge Stewart was obviously irate at the thick stack of lies delivered to her in the form of police reports and sworn testimony. She also was none too happy with the officers' justification for initiating the arrest of a person who had done nothing more than fail to treat Officer Hughes with as much deference as he felt he deserved. Not only did she dismiss the charges, but she read the entire damning dismissal order out loud.

In discussing the "resisting arrest" charge, Judge Stewart also addressed the pure BS motivating the officers' arrest of Gurule. She points out there's an exceedingly low bar that needs to be met to satisfy the requirements for bringing this charge, but the officers couldn't even meet that.

Actual restraint was placed upon the youth at the moment that Officers Hughes and Hornstein placed control or escort holds on the youth. At that moment, even given the broad authority described above, there is insufficient evidence before the court that the Officers were operating under their community caretaking function, or therefore under color.

At that time, there is no evidence of concerns about a crowd forming. That concern arose as much as a minute later when the officers decided to take the youth to the ground.

Establishing this, she gets to the heart of the matter.

The only facts before the court are that the youth failed the attitude test when he turned and aggressively complained about Officer Hughes clapping him hands. Officer Hughes stepped forward and the youth stepped back and Officer Hughes, immediately followed by Officer Hornstein placed the holds restraining the youth.

And there it is: the bogus arrest was prompted by a little disrespect Officer Hughes just couldn't handle. It is surprising enough that a judge would call out an officer for this sort of behavior. It's even more surprising that she would move on to allowing an arrested suspect's self-defense claims stand. In most cases, the judicial branch shows deference to police officers who use excessive force in their self-defense ("feared for their safety"). In this instance, the deference went the other way.

[W]hile a person may not use physical force to resist what is actually or perceived by the defendant to be an unlawful arrest, a person may use physical force in defending oneself from excessive use of force by an arresting officer. Any injury caused to an officer in the course of engaging in a justifiable use of force to defend oneself may under such circumstances be justified and not criminal.

[...]

In this case, the youth's age is a relevant factor which the court considers even without the testimony of youth. Therefore, the question before the court is whether this youth and a reasonable 16 year old youth in his position would have believed that the use or imminent use of force against him exceeded the force reasonably necessary and whether he was entitled to defend himself with a degree of force which a reasonable 16 year old would reasonably believe to be necessary for the purpose.

[...]

The take down, although intended to be gentle and with adequate warning was nothing like that plan. Officer Hornstein swept the youth's feet out from under him causing him the sensation of falling forward without the use of his hands to break his fall. The next 35 to 45 seconds was a melee of fists and punches and bodies falling upon him. Prior to reaching the wall, the youth was attempting to regain his footing and get back on his feet and remove himself from what a reasonable person would have felt was a senseless and aggressive use of excessive physical force.

Once at the wall, the independent evidence of the video clips is less clear but continues to show the youth trying to struggle away from the officers rather than engage in a physical altercation…

[...]

[G]iven that confusion, rapidity of events, the tangle of officers and the youth and the confusion caused by the crowd, I find that as to all charges herein, the state has not established beyond a reasonable doubt that the youth was not reasonably justified in the use of self-defense as to all of the charges herein.

And with that, Thai Gurule is no longer facing criminal charges. As of yet, there's no word of what consequences, if any, are awaiting the officers involved. The city's police department is only a couple of years removed from a DOJ investigation, but incidents like these show there's still work to be done.

Despite the fact that no federal license plate legislation has been proposed, the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP) has sent a pre-emptive letter to top Congressional lawmakers, warning them against any future restrictions of automated license plate readers. The IACP claims to be the "world's oldest and largest association of law enforcement executives."

The letter is stained with the tears of law enforcement entities whose thirst for bulk collections is only rivaled by national security agencies.

We are deeply concerned about efforts to portray automated license plate recognition (ALPR) technology as a national real-time tracking capability for law enforcement. The fact is that this technology and the data it generates is not used to track people in real time. ALPR is used every day to generate investigative leads that help law enforcement solve murders, rapes, and serial property crimes, recover abducted children, detect drug and human trafficking rings, find stolen vehicles, apprehend violent criminal alien fugitives, and support terrorism investigations.

The "efforts to portray" ALPRs as ad hoc tracking devices aren't limited to imaginative conspiracy theorists. Millions of plate scans are added to private companies' databases every day. The total number of records retained by Vigilant, the most prominent manufacturer of ALPRs, totals in the billions. That amount of data can easily be used to track nearly anyone's day-to-day movements. And the database is accessible by law enforcement agencies around the nation. There's no geofencing keeping the data compartmentalized to what's "relevant" to local agencies.

As for the rest of the paragraph, those claims have yet to be backed up by arrest statistics. The amount of plate data collected far outweighs the results.

There is a misconception of continuous government tracking of individuals using ALPR information. This has led to attempts to curtail law enforcement’s use of the technology without a proper and fair effort to truly understand the anonymous nature of the data, how it is used, and how it is protected.

Note how the "misconception" is nothing privacy advocates are actually saying. No one's mistaking plate scans for a GPS tracking device. They've just noted that the end result is nearly identical. Gather enough data and you don't need a more "intrusive" method.

We are seeing harmful proposals – appropriations amendments and legislation – to restrict or completely ban law enforcement’s use of ALPR technology and data without any effort to truly understand the issue. Yet, any review would make clear that the value of this technology is beyond question, and that protections against mis-use of the data by law enforcement are already in place. That is one of the reasons why critics are hard-pressed to identify any actual instances of mis-use.

Translation: no one understands this high-tech device but us cops.

Also: "value" is "beyond question?" If so, why is it so hard to get any law enforcement agency to produce some evidence to back up this claim? It's high tech, but it's also fallible tech. And it's tech that is being deployed with little to nothing in the way of privacy protections or oversight.

Virginia has become the first state in America to impose a very short data retention limit on the use of automated license plate readers (LPRs, or ALPRs). VA cops will now only be able to keep such data for seven days unless there is an active, ongoing criminal investigation.

Only a few states have imposed any legislative limits on the technology. For most US law enforcement agencies, the data is gathered en masse (and sometimes in inappropriate places) and held forever. The LAPD argued that every one of the thousands of plate scans it had gathered is somehow "relevant" to ongoing investigations. When you're faced with claims like that, it's hard to argue with legislative limits being introduced. The police won't police themselves. Someone usually has to force them into applying even the most minimal of restrictions on ALPR use.

We call on Congress to foster a reasonable and transparent discussion about ALPR.

That's rich. "Transparent discussion." The hell does that even mean in a law enforcement context? Agencies don't want to talk about ALPRs, drones, Stingray devices, their officers' misconduct, etc. The prevailing law enforcement mentality is almost completely opposed to transparency. These police associations aren't interested in Congress or anyone else having a "transparent discussion." What they want is a guided discussion that results in more data-hauling business as usual for the agencies these associations represent.

But this sentence is the best thing about this overwrought letter:

If legislative efforts to curtail ALPR use are successful, federal, state, and local law enforcement’s ability to investigate crimes will be significantly impacted given the extensive use of the technology today.

Shorter police: "We like our shiny tech tools so much, we've forgotten how to perform police work." If they can't get as much as they can, as often as they can and access it at their leisure, the streets will run red with the blood of the innocent. This sort of thinking goes all the way to the top, where the FBI's James Comey has promised death, molestation and Colombia 2.0 if the government isn't allowed to build itself backdoors in cellphone encryption.

How a device that delivers a 0.2% hit rate has become something the cops lean on so heavily they simply can't go on without it is a question that deserves a "transparent" answer, rather than the hitch-in-the-throat talking points delivered here. All anyone wants is something telling cops they can't keep everything for as long as they want. They want privacy impact assessments and honest answers to worrying questions. All we've received so far is unproven claims of the tech's "effectiveness" and the constant pimping of dead children and human trafficking victims, with the existential threat of suppliers delivering product to a receptive market thrown in for good measure.

from the Glomar-logic dept

If you're a UK-based journalist who's reported on the Snowden leaks, it's safe to say you're under investigation. Not only are you being investigated, but that investigation itself is so secret, it can't be discussed. The Intercept's Ryan Gallagher sent a Freedom of Information request to London's Metropolitan Police (the Met) for more information about the investigation -- something twice publicly confirmed by Met representatives.

But when asked specifically for information on the ongoing investigation, the agency had nothing to say.

[T]he Metropolitan Police... says everything about the investigation’s existence is a secret and too dangerous to disclose. In response to a Freedom of Information Act request from this reporter, the force has repeatedly refused to release any information about the status of the investigation, how many officers are working on it, or how much taxpayer money has been spent on it. The Met wrote in its response:

"to confirm or deny whether we hold any information concerning any current or previous investigations into the alleged actions of Edward Snowden could potentially be misused proving detrimental to national security.'

In this current environment, where there is a possibility of increased threat of terrorist activity, providing any details even to confirm or deny that any information exists could assist any group or persons who wish to cause harm to the people of the nation which would undermine the safeguarding of national security."

The response is hardly a response. In fact, almost the entirety of the nine-page document Gallagher received is simply reasons WHY the Met won't be responding affirmatively or negatively to his inquiry. The only new information gleaned is that control of the investigation has changed hands.

AC Mark Rowley has taken over as Head of Specialist Operations following the departure of Cressida Dick

That's the one thing the "Counter Terrorism Command" can confirm. This would be the same department within the Met that was directly involved with the detainment and questioning of Glenn Greenwald's partner, David Miranda. Everything else falls under a variety of exemptions, including the oh-so-opaque "state secrets" designation.

The Metropolitan Police Service can neither confirm nor deny whether it holds any of the information that you have requested, as the duty in S1(1)(a) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 does not apply, by virtue of the following exemptions:

There's more detail later, when the response details the agency's decision to declare the request to be "not in the public interest."

The security of the country is of paramount importance and the Police service will not divulge whether information is or is not held if to do so would undermine National Security or law enforcement. Whilst there is a public interest in the transparency of policing operations and providing assurance that the police service is appropriately and effectively engaging with the threats posed by groups or individuals there is a very strong public interest in safeguarding the integrity of police investigations and operations in the highly sensitive area of extremism, crime prevention, public disorder and terrorism prevention.

[...]

After weighing up the competing interests I have determined that confirmation or denial of any information being held concerning whether the MPS has investigated the alleged actions of Edward Snowden or not would not be in the public interest. To confirm or deny that information is held regarding any individual or investigation that may or may not have taken place could be detrimental to any investigations that may be being conducted now or in the future.

But, of course, all of this discussion about national security, public interest and possibly compromised investigations does not confirm that there's a twice-previously-confirmed investigation of UK journalists in progress.

However, this should not be taken as necessarily indicating that any information that would meet your request exists or does not exist.

This UK-style Glomar tosses the request back to The Intercept, which has tossed it to the nearest governing body..

The Intercept has filed a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office, the public body that enforces the U.K.’s freedom of information laws, about the Met’s refusal to release information about the current status of the investigation. The commissioner will now look at how the police handled the request and decide whether they should be ordered to hand over the relevant details.

The Met continues to maintain its code of silence in the face of its earlier public statements about investigating those publishing the Snowden leaks. When asked how something the agency itself publicly discussed several months ago is now a "national security" issue, the Met offered a swift "no comment" -- a handy way to dodge the logic hole in its Freedom of Information request denial.

from the real-american-heroes dept

Police: they have a job that demands respect, even if those doing the job occassionally do not. We talk a great deal here at Techdirt about some of the frightening uses of military grade equipment by local law enforcement agencies, about what sometimes seems like a neverending list of civil rights abuses, and so on. Still, as I said, I respect the job. It's my respect for that job that leads me to think that the Portland cops who arrested a homeless woman for charging her phone on a public outlet need a greater understanding of what it is exactly that police in this stupid country are supposed to do.

Now, if you're thinking to yourself, "There's no way police in Portland arrested a person just for plugging her cell phone charger into a public outlet," well, you're correct; they arrested two people for that in one trip.

In this case, the theft was first reported by Portland Patrol Inc., and two Portland police officers followed up to issue the woman and her co-defendant, a homeless man who was also charging his cellphone at the planter box outlet, citations to appear in court for third-degree theft of services — a Class C misdemeanor. According to the Electrical Research Institute, it costs about 25 cents a year to charge the average mobile phone. If the phone in this scenario had gone from zero charge to full charge, the cost would have amounted to mere fractions of a penny.

“Jackie,” (who did not want her real name used), says she was shocked when four uniformed officers all agreed her actions warranted not only their response, but also charges and a court summons.

Let's play a quick game. Pick out which part of the pull quote above is the most ridiculous aspect of this story. Got it? You picked the part where the homeless woman and a homeless man were charged with theft for plugging in their phones to a public outlet, didn't you? Well, you're wrong. That is ridiculous, of course, but any single police officer might be some asshole idiot capable of being this dumb. No, the most ridiculous part of the above pull quote is that it took four goddamned officers to respond to this request, and they still reached the conclusion that a citation was warranted. If these aren't verified to be the four dimmest officers on Portland's force, then the entire city has much larger problems.

Oh, and should you be waiting to jump into the comments with some snarky question about why a homeless woman should have a cell phone in the first place, please keep in mind that phones cost less than houses. Also, shut up. Because strictly from the point of view of safety, not to mention the hopes of having any kind of future employment or way to communicate with social services, a cell phone at this point is so necessary for the homeless, not to mention everyone else, that the government should probably be furnishing everyone with some kind of holographic communciations and record-keeping tool that appears on your forearm when needed.

Pictured: a homeless person in President Geigner's America

Now, the Jackie in this story has never before been convicted of a crime, but she missed her court date after losing her citation because, well, where the shit is she going to put it? It's not like she's got a damned file cabinet stocked up in the house she doesn't own. Knowing she missed the court date, Jackie turned herself in to the police and ended up being booked into jail. Keep in mind, if you can, that this is all over "stealing" electricity at levels of "fractions of a penny." Jackie is on several waiting lists for assisted housing and might actually want to work someplace in the future, but, if convicted, she'll always have to be checking that "been convicted of a crime" box now on applications, thanks to a dumb law and four brave boys in blue.

And don't think that this is a completely isolated incident, either.

Jackie’s was not an isolated incident. Public defender Jane Fox says she’s seen similar cases.

“It doesn’t happen very often, but when it does, it’s just insane,” says Fox. “The (case) that I had was somebody charging their phone by the Greyhound bus station. Don’t you have a reasonable expectation that an outlet near the bus station would be OK?”

Only if you thought there was such a thing as common sense, which is clearly in short enough supply so as to no longer be common. As I said, I respect the job of the police, but I sure don't respect the job that these four defenders of the public good managed to do. And just to wrap a nice bow on how stupid this all is, how much do you think the public is paying in tax money to prosecute Jackie's fractions-of-a-penny theft? It seems likely that the paper the citation was written up on cost the taxpayers more than what she did, not to mention getting everyone in the court system involved. And, yet, Jackie's the one stealing from taxpayers? Please...

from the a-laugh-at-the-expense-of-life-and-liberty dept

Kern County, California, is apparently no place to seek justice. The Kern County Sheriff's Department is infamous for its handling of residents -- both inside and outside the jail it controls. During a four-month stretch in 2013, the Sheriff's Department was involved with three in-custody deaths. In two of the three cases, deputies applied a ton of force to arrestees, resulting in de facto death penalties for the crimes they allegedly committed.

Kern County prosecutor Robert Murray added two lines of transcript to “evidence” that the defendant confessed to an even more egregious offense than that with which he had been charged—the already hideous offense of molesting a child. With the two sentences that state’s attorney Murray perjuriously added, Murray was able to threaten charges that carried a term of life in prison.

Here's what Murray added to the transcript:

(Detective): "You're so guilty you child molester."

(Defendant): "I know. I'm just glad she's not pregnant like her mother."

Murray added this to the English translation of the confession transcription, but not to the Spanish version -- the language used for the entire interrogation. He then handed this off to the defense, just as it was advising the defendant to consider a plea deal. It wasn't until the defense requested the original recordings that Murray finally admitted adding statements the defendant never made -- nine days after he turned his edited version over to the defendant.

Here's Murray's defense of his actions:

It was only after defense attorney Ernest Hinman confronted Murray about the altered version. Murray said he meant it only as a joke to be kept between the two men [Hinman and Murray].

Haha. Life and liberty are hilarious. It's only someone's life in the balance. No better place to deploy a little prosecutorial wit than in the transcript of a police interrogation.

The court wasn't amused.

The trial judge saw no laughing matter—and neither should the rest of us. He dismissed the indictment completely, and in a scathing opinion, also quoted by the appellate court, wrote that the prosecutor’s actions “diluted the protections accompanying the right to counsel and ran the risk of fraudulently inducing defendant to enter a plea and forfeit his right to a jury trial.” The court refused to “tolerate such outrageous conduct that results in the deprivation of basic fundamental constitutional rights that are designed to provide basic fairness.”

Not only did Murray tank the prosecution side, but he also managed to scuttle the defendant's legal representation as well. During his asinine defense of the altered transcript, he offhandedly mentioned that the defense counsel had told him the defendant "had no viable defense." The prosecution team was hit hard, but so was the defendant, who suddenly found he couldn't even trust his own representation.

Despite its own prosecutor admitting he had falsified evidence, the DA's office appealed the court's decision, arguing that only "abject physical brutality" should result in dismissal of charges. It found no comfort at the higher court.

Indeed, there is simply no support for the People’s contention that an act must involve some form of physical brutality in order to support a sanction of dismissal. Meanwhile, there is ample support for defendant’s contention that egregious violations of a defendant’s constitutional rights are sufficient to establish outrageous government misconduct.

Murray is now facing disciplinary action from the state bar, including the possibility of being disbarred completely. He'll get to wait out this decision in comfort, as the DA's office has made no proactive move to punish someone who admitted in court that he falsified evidence.

The law and order side always reminds us that they'll do all they can to put bad guys away. In theory, it's dedication and hard work. In practice, it appears to be a wholelotoflying.

from the and-they'll-be-armed-with-cameras!!! dept

Your law enforcement panic of the day: an app that automatically uploads recorded footage and forwards it to the ACLU. (h/t to Dave Maass.)

New Jersey's ACLU branch put together "Police Tape" back in 2012, an app which allowed anyone to record cops with a press of a button. The app then hid itself while the recording continued. If the recording was interrupted, the app would automatically send the recording to the ACLU. The app also advised those confronted by cops of their rights in various situations.

"OFFICER AWARENESS," the bulletin yells, before heading into a brief summation of the app's capabilities. It takes a turn for the truly absurd when Lt. Eric Deroian attempts to portray the app as potentially dangerous to officers.

Both apps [including the "stop and frisk" app developed by ACLU-NY] will notify other app users within a defined area if someone has activated their app, with the exact location of the police action. This may result in officer safety issues if community groups are able to pinpoint various police actions, and respond to the location in the form of a flash mob.

First off, let's deal with the why of this app's existence. It is only because officers have routinely (and illegally) confiscated, shut down or deleted recordings from civilians' cell phones that an automatic archival process is needed. Despite being told repeatedly by judges, the DOJ and their own internal policies that citizens have the right to record police officers in public areas, many cops still seem to believe this isn't actually a right but a privilege completely subject to any recorded officer's willingness to oblige.

Because cops doing bad things hate to be held accountable for their actions, they often turn on those recording their actions. And because officers have power, weapons and the benefit of a doubt eternally on their side, it's usually pretty easy to shut down recordings. The tide is slowly turning, but civilians are still severely limited in their options when confronted by a cop who doesn't want to be recorded.

That's why apps like these even exist, and cops have only themselves to blame for this situation.

Now, let's address the inadvertent hilarity of the "flash mob" claim. Even if there were enough people with the app installed in the area, it's highly unlikely a coordinated (and apparently threatening) response would be mounted. The thing about successful flash mobs is that they're usually coordinated ahead of time. The best ones are, anyway. There are some that gel unexpectedly, but flash mobs usually require participants to be at least a little prepared.

Being suddenly alerted about some unexpected police bullshittery isn't generally going to provoke anything more than additional cameras and angry voices. I've seen tons of police video captured by citizens and I have yet to see crowds physically attack officers no matter how much of a beatdown they're putting on some unlucky individual. A lot of yelling and swearing? Yeah. But nothing more "threatening" than that. Even when a cop is choking the life out of someone, everyone stands a few feet away and hurls nothing more dangerous than epithets and criticism.

Here's the other thing: You know who else can "notify [others] in their area" and "pinpoint various police actions?" Cops. And their "flash mobs" usually arrive at high speed with sirens blaring, and armed to the teeth with a variety of lethal (and slightly less-lethal, depending on application) weapons. This "mob" has the force of law behind it, as well as a large number of options citizens don't have -- like departments and unions willing to justify nearly any amount of misconduct, as well as various levels of legal immunity should the "police action" result in a civil lawsuit. They'll also be acting out of "fear for their safety," so the occasional kidney punch/emptied gun magazine will be almost instantly forgiven. All the unfriendly citizen flash mob has is… well, their voices and their cameras. Nothing like bringing a Galaxy 4 to a gun/Taser fight.

Bottom line: there's nothing to fear from police accountability apps like these except the accountability. This is what Lt. Deroian's warning is really about. He closes it by noting that a "suspect" had the app installed on his phone, but leaves the details of this person's crime wholly up to the overactive imaginations of the officers reading this "alert."

A better "Officer Awareness" memo might have addressed the fact that citizens have a right to record and that patrolling OFFICERS should be AWARE their actions have a good chance of being recorded, so try not to violate too many rights/beat down too many "suspects." And be careful out there.

from the one-way-surveillance-and-zero-accountability dept

More cities and states are getting behind the idea that outfitting their law enforcement officers with body cameras will result in better policing and more accountability. Unfortunately, many of them then follow this moment of clarity by gutting the "accountability" part of the programs.

Los Angeles law enforcement agencies will only turn over camera footage if it's part of a criminal or civil suit. Florida legislators are pushing for additional exceptions in the state's open records laws specifically for body camera footage and specifically at the request of the state's police union.

[A]udio and video data captured by a portable video recording system that is not part of an active or inactive criminal investigation must be destroyed within 90 days of the date the data were captured, unless the data subject, or any peace officer identifiable by the data, submits a written request to the law enforcement agency to retain the data for possible use in a future proceeding related to the circumstances under which the data were originally collected. Any law enforcement agency that receives a request to retain data shall retain it for a reasonable time, based upon the likelihood of its future use and the agency's policies for retention. Peace officers who are identifiable by portable video recording system data shall have unrestricted access to the data while it is retained and must be permitted to make copies.

It seems reasonable... until you realize what it's allowing law enforcement agencies to do. Anything retained by these agencies will only be accessible to civilians in the recording, and then only by request. Alleged misconduct that is cleared by law enforcement oversight will move affected recordings into the "destroy" pile, which means agencies can start deleting potentially damning footage almost immediately, provided there are no current requests for the recordings.

The bill also exempts recordings from state public records laws by deeming nearly all recordings "nonpublic" by default.

Except for data classified as active criminal investigative data pursuant to subdivision 7, portable video recording system data is private data on individuals or nonpublic data at all times. Notwithstanding subdivision 7, portable video recording system data that are part of an inactive investigation remain classified as provided in this subdivision.

Subdivision 7 pertains to "criminal investigative data" -- which is also "nonpublic" and "private."

On the other hand, peace officers will have unrestricted access to any footage they appear in. This open-ended access is the sort of thing that can lead to tampering and deletion. Any officer should, at best, have controlled access to recordings involving them if the recording system is going to maintain any sort of integrity. Anything else is completely irresponsible.

If the bill goes forward, the body cameras willed be largely robbed of their deterrent effect. By removing the general public from the information flow, the cameras will no longer be tools of police accountability, but rather just another surveillance option for peace officers. The cameras basically become "one way" collections, wholly controlled by the officers who generate the recordings.

Those representing the law enforcement side are defending this bill by presuming to speak for the public they don't want to be accountable to...

Dennis Flaherty, executive director of the Minnesota Police and Peace Officers Association, said public access to body camera footage "really serves no public purpose."

… because it might make things a little tougher for peace officers:

Flaherty and other law enforcement representatives expressed concern about what wide public access would mean -- both for exposing citizens' private lives and, in their minds, spurring more complaints against officers.

"Complaints against officers" is exactly what's spurring so many states and cities to outfit their cops with cameras. Flaherty conveniently forgets that body camera footage can also exonerate wrongly-accused officers in his haste to portray body cams as somehow intrusive to public officers.

Video works both ways… theoretically. Public access is essential if the camera programs are going to have any chance at reducing complaints and misconduct. Drastically limiting the number of people who can access recordings makes it highly unlikely the goals will be met. The bill creates a cover system for abuse and allows for full narrative control by law enforcement agencies. And this is coming from a state where law enforcement already expects the public to perform its surveillance for it and turn over video recordings captured in private businesses whenever a cop asks for it.

That's not accountability. That's nothing more than a bunch of government agencies attempting to dodge their responsibilities to the public they're supposed to be serving.

from the but-more-work-is-still-needed dept

The Institute for Justice's 2010 report "Policing for Profit" listed Virginia as one of the worst five states in the nation in terms of forfeiture abuse. Pushing the state towards its Bottom Five finish was this perverted incentive: 100% of the proceeds from civil asset forfeiture were retained by the law enforcement agency performing the seizure. And, like a majority of states, Virginia also perverted the justice system, deeming the property "guilty" and transferring the burden of proof to those whose assets were seized.

Now that civil asset forfeiture has gone mainstream, receiving coverage from major press outlets, legislators are having a harder time ignoring opponents of these "legalized theft" programs. In response, Virginia's lawmakers are trying to drag the state out of its forfeiture morass.

Last week the Virginia House of Delegates overwhelmingly approved a bill that would effectively raise the burden of proof for civil forfeitures by forcing the government to return seized property unless it can obtain a criminal conviction. The bill, introduced by Del. Mark Cole (R-Spotsylvania) and Del. Scott Surovell (D-Mount Vernon), passed by a vote of 92 to 6 and is now being considered by the state Senate.

This fixes one major issue with many civil asset forfeiture programs. Virginia's laws only demanded a "preponderance of the evidence," something that sounds like a lot but in reality is far lower than establishing guilt "beyond a reasonable doubt." If the latter edges towards a theoretical 75% assurance of guilt, the percentage for asset forfeiture approaches a coin flip: 51%. Now, there needs to be a conviction before the agency can keep the seized property.

But there are also problems left unaddressed by this proposal.

That conviction does not have to involve the owner, however. Someone who uses an asset (a car or a home, say) in connection with a crime could be convicted, whereupon the asset would be forfeited, even if it belonged to someone else. Once a "substantial connection" between an asset and a crime is established, Virginia puts the burden on innocent owners to prove their innocence, and this bill does not change that.

The law also doesn't change the allocation of seized funds. 100% is still awarded to the agency performing the seizure with 10% of that allocated for "promoting law enforcement activities." The law also leaves the DOJ loophole open, allowing agencies to route seizures through the feds in order to dodge restrictions placed on them by local laws.

The introduction of a criminal conviction requirement should be the minimum standard any agency with these powers should have to meet. Without it, you get the sort of abuse perpetrated by Virginia's law enforcement, which has seized nearly $3 million/year in vehicles for the last 18 years and approximately $5 million in cash/year over the last decade. Contrary to the oft-stated defense that these programs are necessary to cripple powerful drug lords and multimillion dollar fraudsters, more than half the cash seized from 2001-2006 fell in the $614-1,288 range and the average worth of vehicles seized has hovered at about $6,000.

Law enforcement agencies won't be happy with the new requirement, as it's certain to result in a lower take. According to Institute of Justice statistics, the total amount seized by the state's agencies spiked in 2007, jumping from about $4 million a year to over $25 million a year. And there's been no sign of slowdown since.

It's not a complete fix, but it does at least attack the biggest problem inherent to these programs: the lack of a conviction requirement. Somehow, proponents of asset forfeiture feel there's still some unshattered logic remaining when they contradictorily deem certain property guilty, but somehow can't amass enough evidence to charge its former owners with anything.

from the chitanamo dept

As someone who has lived in or near Chicago my entire life, it's been a long-standing source of amusement to hear outsiders' perceptions of the city relayed back to me. Whether it's our neverending association with Al Capone, the strange obsession with our casserole-style pizza, or the perception that our sports fans are meatball worshippers at the altar of Mike Ditka, so much of what people think of us just isn't particularly true.

Unfortunately, the perception of how our police force cares to operate here is also largely incorrect: it's so much worse than you think. If you thought it was all corruption and laziness from some (and I stress some) of Chicago's finest, you don't know the half of it, because the other half is the pure denial of the basic rights we are supposed to have when dealing with our protectors. The recent work done by The Guardian in detailing how Chicago police operated a CIA-style black site ought to chill the bones of anyone planning on being anywhere near my beloved city.

The facility, a nondescript warehouse on Chicago’s west side known as Homan Square, has long been the scene of secretive work by special police units. Interviews with local attorneys and one protester who spent the better part of a day shackled in Homan Square describe operations that deny access to basic constitutional rights. At least one man was found unresponsive in a Homan Square “interview room” and later pronounced dead.

The practices undertaken at the Homan facility are alleged to include detaining people without documenting their arrest, beatings, keeping detainees shackled for hours at a time, refusing attorneys for detainees access to the facility, and detaining people while refusing them legal counsel for up to a full day. These practices, by the way, weren't reserved for the mature, but were happily visited upon minors, because when you're going to go evil there is no point in half-assing it. Do these types of practices sound familiar to you? Would it help if the detainees were in orange jumpsuits and had the tan of a Cuban sun upon their skin? You get the point.

Brian Jacob Church, a protester known as one of the “Nato Three”, was held and questioned at Homan Square in 2012 following a police raid. Officers restrained Church for the better part of a day, denying him access to an attorney, before sending him to a nearby police station to be booked and charged.

“Homan Square is definitely an unusual place,” Church told the Guardian on Friday. “It brings to mind the interrogation facilities they use in the Middle East. The CIA calls them black sites. It’s a domestic black site. When you go in, no one knows what’s happened to you.”

Church was held at the facility for just under 24 hours, most of that time spent cuffed to the furniture there. Though he had immediately asked to call legal counsel, this request was denied. Neither he nor the 11 other protestors that were taken there were allowed to see legal counsel until finally Church's, and only Church's, lawyer was allowed in after 20 or so hours. Prior to that, police had been questioning him illegaly. Because of the well-publicized nature of the protestor's detention, lawyers had been searching for him for hours. The reason Church couldn't be found wasn't a bug, though. It was a feature.

Though the raid attracted major media attention, a team of attorneys could not find Church through 12 hours of “active searching”, Sarah Gelsomino, Church’s lawyer, recalled. No booking record existed. Only after she and others made a “major stink” with contacts in the offices of the corporation counsel and Mayor Rahm Emanuel did they even learn about Homan Square.

They sent another attorney to the facility, where he ultimately gained entry, and talked to Church through a floor-to-ceiling chain-link metal cage. Finally, hours later, police took Church and his two co-defendants to a nearby police station for booking. After serving two and a half years in prison, Church is currently on parole after he and his co-defendants were found not guilty in 2014 of terrorism-related offenses but guilty of lesser charges of possessing an incendiary device and the misdemeanor of “mob action”.

And yet, as ridiculous as it sounds, Church and the other protestors got off lucky.

On February 2, 2013, John Hubbard was taken to Homan Square. Hubbard never walked out. The Chicago Tribune reported that the 44-year old was found “unresponsive inside an interview room”, and pronounced dead. The Cook County medical examiner’s office could not locate any record for the Guardian indicating a cause of Hubbard’s death. It remains unclear why Hubbard was ever in police custody.

It's quite a shame that we can't ask Mr. Hubbard because he died within the facility where lawyers are refused entrance, where detainees are kept out of the record books, and where the police appear to operate with impunity. Now, it's roughly around here where you're thinking one of two things. Some of you are thinking that such a claim as this is so outlandish that there's very little chance that it's true. Others must be thinking that the accusations of abuse and the denial of rights are rare mistakes made by a tiny percentage of officers. Too bad this secret wasn't all that secret.

“It’s sort of an open secret among attorneys that regularly make police station visits, this place – if you can’t find a client in the system, odds are they’re there,” said Chicago lawyer Julia Bartmes.

Chicago civil-rights attorney Flint Taylor said Homan Square represented a routinization of a notorious practice in local police work that violates the fifth and sixth amendments of the constitution.

“This Homan Square revelation seems to me to be an institutionalization of the practice that dates back more than 40 years,” Taylor said, “of violating a suspect or witness’ rights to a lawyer and not to be physically or otherwise coerced into giving a statement.”

Keep in mind the references to Gitmo and CIA black sites overseas and then juxtapose that to the ongoing militarization of domestic police within our borders, and the picture becomes a clear warning against allowing the practices of our military and spy organizations to trickle into our domestic police departments. Will the outside world pressure Chicago into giving up the abuse? Unlikely. The outside view of my city is often wrong, but there's no doubting the popular assertion that Chicago is a machine, and the police department represents a powerful cog in that machine, one with a great deal of torque and few placed within which to shove a brick that will keep it from turning.

from the protections-that-only-protect-bad-cops dept

Florida's legislators are pushing through bills mandating body camera use by the state's law enforcement officers. So far, so good, except for the fact that law enforcement officers aren't really looking for greater transparency or accountability, at least not according to Florida Police Benevolent Association chief Gary Bradford.

“Our concern is if the camera is on, and it’s required to be on through the entire shift, then it will capture video and audio when you have roll calls or when you’re walking down the hallway or just as you’re go through your day. You’re on a lunch break, you’re in the privacy of your own car with your partner, you’re having a conversation about having a fight with your wife in the morning, or something along those lines, and we just think those things are private, and they shouldn’t be part of the discussion,” said Bradford.

PCS/SB 248 creates a public records exemption for an audio or video recording made by a law enforcement officer in the course of the officer performing his or her official duties and responsibilities, if the recording:

Is taken within the interior of a private residence; Is taken on the property of a facility that offers health care, mental health care, or social services; Is taken at the scene of a medical emergency; Is taken at a place where a person recorded or depicted in the recording has a reasonable expectation of privacy; Shows a child younger than 18 years of age inside a school or on school property; or Shows a child younger than 14 years of age at any location.

Taken without context, the list of exceptions seems reasonable. But match it up with recent events, and you can see where this set of exceptions could easily nullify this tool of accountability.

Medical emergency exception? Sure, HIPAA and other related laws make medical events and history very private information, subject to several sharing restrictions. But what if a cop is called to assist someone who's suffering a medical emergency or is suicidal or suffers from mental illness? Far too often, a call for help is answered with violence. Under this exception, the underlying medical emergency prompting the police response would allow law enforcement agencies to withhold captured body cam footage.

The exceptions devoted to minors would allow law enforcement agencies to withhold the sort of damning footage that contradicted the Cleveland police narrative in the shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice. Without this footage, the public would have been left to rely on the CPD's claims that Rice refused to comply with multiple orders to put his hands up and "made a move towards his waistband," ultimately resulting in his being shot to death by responding officers. A park surveillance camera recording showed what actually happened: two police officers drove across the park, stopping within feet of Tamir Rice and and shot him within two seconds of arrival.

"If this was really about privacy, it would apply to what officers can practically release on their own as well," Richardson says. "So this is really just about shielding police misconduct. If police want to control the narrative, they can release what they want."

While not nearly as restrictive as the LAPD's policy of only releasing body cam footage to parties involved in criminal or civil court proceedings, it's still a recipe for disaster. Florida has laws in place that already restrict the release of police-captured recordings and this pile of exceptions -- while facially well-intentioned -- allows agencies to further dodge accountability for their officers' misdeeds.